


for basically the rest of my life

by words-writ-in-starlight (Gunmetal_Crown)



Series: a softer animorphs [4]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Angst, Book 10: The Android, F/M, Fluff and Angst, I don't think there's a 'fluff with an angsty ending' tag, Irony, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-12
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-13 03:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11175816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gunmetal_Crown/pseuds/words-writ-in-starlight
Summary: I don’t know what the fuck true love even is, but I do want to hang out with you for basically the rest of my life.  (Let’s hang out—TO THE DEATH.)Peter and Eva didn't fight nearly as much as he told Marco they did.  It's just easier to remember the bad times than to miss the good ones.Peter's memories during his conversation with Marco during Book 10.





	for basically the rest of my life

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, am I working on my long fics? Yes. Do I feel guilty for my lack of inspiration? ...also yes. But this is done and so are like 8 more in the series, so I'm just going to post them regularly.
> 
> A quick housekeeping note. Since I am taking some time off from school to sort myself out, I'm actually putting myself on a posting schedule for all my complete material! [This Dragon Age: Inquisition story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11133666/chapters/24845535) will update on Wednesdays, while this Animorphs series will update on Saturdays or Sundays. My ongoing fics (YES, including [things we lost in the fire](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7196675/chapters/16332587) and [shout it out](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7352572/chapters/16700983) which, listen, I love all of the people who have stuck out this fucking hiatus more than LIFE) will be updated on either Saturdays/Sundays or Wednesdays, and just take the place of the other fic I would be posting that day.

Eva and Peter didn’t fight all that often, really—argued, certainly, often with sources literally flying through the air, but not fighting.  Peter would feel guilty for telling Marco as much, later, he could tell already, the words hanging in the air.  Marco hadn’t had the look of a shocked and disillusioned child, though, the expression Peter had been anticipating—but maybe he shouldn’t have.  Marco wasn’t much of a child these days.  It was Peter’s fault, he had been the one who forced Marco to grow up too fast since Eva…since Eva, and the kid had been sleeping so poorly lately that he looked five years older. 

Marco had just looked sad, eyes still fixed on his plate as Peter talked about her.  Something unidentifiable ( _disgust_ , whispered a deep-buried part of Peter’s brain, some instinctive scrap of recognition) had flashed over Marco’s face when Peter mentioned that strange and peaceful year.  But he hadn’t looked like a child in the least.

They didn’t fight so much, was the point.  Eva and Peter were both strong-willed and moreover Eva relished a lively debate, so they certainly clashed from time to time, but Peter wasn’t a fool.  Eva was never any less than fully prepared for war, for absolute carnage, and she was always armed to the teeth with facts and sources and evidence to support her case.  Whenever they fought, Peter knew it was only a matter of time before she managed to methodically demolish whatever ground he had been able to hold, laying every exhibit out like a landmine and watching with satisfaction as it blew his own case to smithereens.  It was impossible to win a round in a real fight—which was frustrating as hell, to be sure, but also pretty much why he’d married her.

The bulleted list of reasons that proposing would be the most beneficial act he could possibly take, which she had delivered after dating him for three years, in a manila folder complete with an annotated bibliography, had been quite compelling.

Arguments, though, they had those _all_ the time—Eva had always sniffed disdainfully and corrected that they were intellectual debates, _querido_ , and then she would laugh and laugh, both arms looped around his neck.  Sometimes they were over inanities, like their ongoing disagreement about Star Trek.  She was very stubbornly fond of the original series; Peter could tolerate it, but preferred Next Generation.  They had started the argument after the very first episode of TNG came out, and it had the well-worn feel of a favorite jacket after a few years, both of them able to predict the other’s words and gloating over every time they took each other off-guard.

Other times their arguments were more reasonable, like the time Marco had come home dripping wet and proudly announced that he and Jake had gotten their revenge on the kids down the block who had bombed them with water balloons the previous week.  Peter had never quite been clear on the exact sequence of events, even though Marco had walked his parents through it in gleeful detail.  It had involved Marco finding himself and Jake a way onto the roof of the kids’ house, Jake’s cousin Rachel equipped with an extra-long garden hose and pressure-washer attachment, and Jake at the helm with a bucket of Super Soakers.  It had ended with the three of them sprinting back down the street to their respective homes, soaked to the skin and triumphant.

Peter hadn’t even been able to get out word _one_ of the reprimand on his tongue when Eva burst out laughing and held out a hand.  Marco, grinning, had slapped her a high-five and trundled off to put on dry clothes.

The ensuing debate—Eva reminding Peter that the kids in question were bullies and brats as she snickered, Peter trying not to let his wife’s good humor infect him while he reminded her that their six-year-old had just put himself in some level of danger by _climbing a house_ —had taken place mostly in whispers, except for the laughter that bubbled out of Eva’s mouth.  It had been short, with indeterminate result.  By the time Marco had returned some five minutes later, Eva was standing from her chair and prowling forward, catlike, to settle into Peter’s lap.  Eva had always moved like a cat, the same sort of total assurance that she was in command, that whatever she hunted was hers and whatever she wanted to sit on would cooperate. 

Peter had smiled up at her, wrapping his arms around her waist as she shook back her masses of curly hair, and she had solemnly kissed the tip of his nose.  She was a warm and supple weight—much like a cat, he thought wryly—and the faint prickle of her immaculate nails as they danced over the back of his neck was almost pleasant.

“You’re a good man,” she had said, eyes dancing.  “But if our son only every gets into trouble taking out bullies, we’ve got it easy.”

“When he makes a plan too big for him and a few random kids to handle and falls off a roof or something equally disastrous, I’ll blame you,” Peter had shot back, and reluctantly allowed himself to grin up at her.

“Gross,” Marco had muttered under his breath, passing through the kitchen toward the living room.

Eva, on Peter’s lap, was taller than him, and she had leaned down so that her hair tumbled around them both, and he had reached up to cradle her face and kiss her, tasting the laugh that spilled off her tongue onto his.  When they parted, he had grinned expectantly, and said, “I love you.”

Eva’s eyes had always sparkled with delight when he said that.  She had always said the same thing, even at their wedding— _after_ she’d completed the vows to the satisfaction of both the priest and her Catholic mother.

“I love you too, _querido_.  Let’s hang out--” here a pause, for the drama of it “—to the death!”  And they had both laughed until they shook, until Eva was clinging to the back of Peter’s chair and he had his face buried in her shoulder and Marco’s high child’s voice rang out from the other room.

No, they hadn’t fought often.  But it hurt more to remember that joy, laughing at Eva’s old joke with his family happy and close and lively, than it did to remember their battles royal.  Picturing Eva with her lips curved into a smile and her eyes bright was like a knife being slowly twisted between Peter’s ribs—it was so much blunter, so much easier, to remember the blind anger he felt at watching her destroy his carefully marshalled cases when they fought.

God, he would give anything to fight with her one more time.  He would die on the spot to hear her tell that terrible joke again.

He didn’t tell Marco that, though.  Peter was going to be the grownup from now on, and never, _ever_ tell his son how much appeal the thought held.  He was going to make sure that Marco got to be a kid, now, that the worst thing that ever happened to him was…well, falling off a roof.

Peter swore it, on his wife’s grave.

**Author's Note:**

> An alternative summary for this fic is "Peter is gonna have a rough awakening about what his son's been doing in his free time" or, if you're Marco, "Peter has angered the Irony Gods."
> 
> Am I strictly speaking happy with this? ...not really? But whatever, I'm not exactly unhappy with it either, and I think I've done as much tweaking as it can stand.
> 
> I am [on Tumblr](http://words-writ-in-starlight.tumblr.com/) if you want to cry about Animorphs with me.


End file.
